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Abilify withdrawal

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Durrab
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13 Apr 2019, 8:27 am

Hi all,

I have been taking abilify 15mg and lexapro 10mg for several years. Due to these meds ive gained a lot of weight and feel drowzy all the time. My sleep is really good and i cud sleep for long hours. I just want to quit them so that I can come back into life and enjoy my daily routine activities. Therefore last month I decided to lower the dosage myself. I split both of my meds into half. This means now I am taking abilify 7.5mg and lexapro 5mg. When I did this I lost my sleep for a couple of days. After a week or so, my sleep returned as it was before on my original dosage. I feel alright and there's nothing wrong even after lowering the dose. Can anyone please tell me how can i further decrease my dosage. Should i again split it into another half? I wud really appreciate for ur guidance. 

Thanks



Noca
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14 Apr 2019, 10:57 pm

Split it into a quarter after taking a half for a week, then do the quarter for a week then try quitting. Before anyone says the obligatory "talk to your doctor" nonsense, doctors don't care about the withdrawals patients have to go through, if they were going to discontinue they would likely cold turkey the patient because its not them who has to go through the withdrawals. I would think you would have more weight gain from the Abilify than the Lexapro, why not stop one at a time?



nick007
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14 Apr 2019, 11:13 pm

Noca wrote:
Split it into a quarter after taking a half for a week, then do the quarter for a week then try quitting. Before anyone says the obligatory "talk to your doctor" nonsense, doctors don't care about the withdrawals patients have to go through, if they were going to discontinue they would likely cold turkey the patient because its not them who has to go through the withdrawals. I would think you would have more weight gain from the Abilify than the Lexapro, why not stop one at a time?
I was on both meds & decided to quit taking them years ago. I quit one at a time starting with the Abilify. I think I was on the lowest dose of Abilify so I quit by just taking half a pill for 8 days. I was taking 20mg of Lexapro at night & then 10mg in the morning. I then took 10mg 2wice a day for a week, then 1ce a day for a week & then half a 10mg for 8 days.


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komamanga
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15 Apr 2019, 7:35 am

I've been on both meds as well but at separate times. I quit Lexapro (40 mg) when it stopped working even at such a high dose by replacing it with Prozac. Neither made me gain weight. Actually Lexapro helped me poop.
I tried to quit Abilify (20 mg) and my other meds cold turkey without asking my doctor. I didn't have withdrawal symptoms. But after one month my symptoms came back and they were pretty debilitating. I saw my doctor and he put me back on meds but this time with lower doses (Abilify 10 mg). And I haven't felt this good for a long time. I'm not sure about how it'll affect my weight gain but I was gaining weight so fast on Abilify that I saw a higher number on the scale everyday. Now it feels like the weight gain has a bit slowed down.
I never experienced any drowsiness so I can't comment on that.